Show your Pride with our rainbow theme pack

It honors the Stonewall Riots from 1969. There are memorials and ceremonies nationwide to honor those in the LGBTQIA community who have been lost throughout the year. There are parades and parties throughout month to celebrate the progress that has been made and to savor the freedom to live as we wish, in the sun as once we could only in the shadows of secrecy. But this year Pride Month has a bit more meaning. June 12th now marks the worst mass shooting in American history, and it was a direct attack on the LGBTQIA community.

To honor them, and the entire community, here are our favorite wallpapers, icon packs, widgets and more customizations to celebrate Pride Month!

Wallpapers

Red is the color of life, and while La Muerte may seem an exotic choice, who better respects life and its passions than the Lady of Death herself. La Muerte’s story to the kids in the Book of Life is an epic parable with many, many lessons, but the one that resonates even beyond honesty, loyalty, and love is life. “Anyone can die. These kids will have the courage to live.” Living can be a struggle, but there is no doubt that it is worth living and that it does, indeed, get better. La Muerte’s fiery red is the color of blood, of passion, of life itself, and that red beckons us to live on and thrive.

Healing is a constant battle through our lives. We struggle to heal physical wounds and overcome ailments, but the healing we most often neglect and horribly fail at is healing our spirits and hearts. We can guard our hearts ferociously, but no matter how diamond-hard our armor is, someone will inevitably slip past the defenses and hurt us. Whether our hearts are shattered into a million pieces or cracked and chipped, healing these wounds takes a lot of time, a lot of patience, and a lot of love from our family, our friends, and from ourselves. This piece speaks to how important that healing can be, even when it drives us to tears, and if you’ve got a moment, its author shares a beautiful story on piece’s page.

The yellow of the pride flag is the for the sun, for the warm light that shines over us all and gives our little blue ball the energy required for life to flourish. The warmth of walking in the sunshine feels like the universe giving us a hug each time we step out into its warm embrace. To live and love freely under that sun is a gift that not all lovers on our planet can savor (yet), but we all crave our golden moments under those golden rays: the simple warmth of a hug from our lover and the warm embrace of the universe.

Green is the color of nature, of life. We live on a little green-blue ball in this vast universe, and we are all a part of its natural beauty. To accept yourself, to accept those around you, is to embrace the diverse nature of the world we live in. To accept the life you want to lead, to accept the lives that others lead, is to help our living community and planet thrive. Some try to decry who we are and who we love as unnatural, but they are wrong. We are natural, we are alive, and we are loved just as all life deserves to be.

Here Comes a Thought is a provoking piece, reminding us to be mindful not only of what our actions and feeling have on others when we spew them onto others, but the impact on everyone when we bottle them up inside. It’s important to ‘take a moment and find yourself’, to recognize where you are mentally and find a way back to a peaceful harmony. Steven Universe is also important in how it tackles gender roles and norms and relationships of every stripe. Stevonnie is a fusion with a non-binary gender. Garnet’s almost perpetual fusion is the product of the intense love between Ruby and Sapphire, two female-gendered gems. Steven Universe also tackles relationships that aren’t perfect with the unrequited romance between Rose and Pearl as well as the unhealthy, possessive and abusive relationship between Lapis Lazuli and Jasper.

Purple on the pride flag symbolizes Spirit, and this purple piece by M-SweetCandy speaks to me on multiple levels. A single girl dances amid the backdrop of the city, lost in ecstasy, her spirit free and thriving in the music and the atmosphere of security and serenity. Single, but not alone. As an asexual, I find myself singing and even dancing among the crowd when I go out, single but not alone. I can feel that I belong, even if I don’t go home with anyone. My spirit can soar and shine among a crowd, even no matter your affiliation, your spirit can shine.

How to apply your wallpaper

Note: These instructions were written for an Android phone using Nova Launcher, but setting a wallpaper on most devices follows much of the same process.

Long-press an open space on your home screen.

Tap Wallpapers.

Tap Pick image.

Select your downloaded wallpaper.

Make sure your image is centered on the screen to your liking, and zoom in if desired.

Tap Set wallpaper.

Pride Icons

The icons on our home screen are a rainbow of colors naturally, but if we want those icons to turn into a small pride flag across our dock, we’ll turn to custom icon packs. Glim is an icon pack with a wonderfully Material pack with both a free and paid version, and it’s a pack with a rainbow of colored variants for most popular apps, from system apps and Google apps to third-party apps like Facebook and Netflix. It also has hundreds upon hundreds of alternate icons.

I’ve employed Glim’s color-variant icons for holiday themes, an adorable BB-8 theme, and several others over the years. This pack is one I can always depend on if I need a pop of color, and once you’ve downloaded it, you’ll also need a home screen launcher that supports individual custom icons, such as our favorite theming launchers. The following instructions were made for a phone using Nova Launcher.

How to apply icons

Long-press an icon you wish to change.

Tap Edit.

Tap the icon window to change the icon.

Select Glim.

Tap the open app icon in the top right corner of the screen to enter Glim’s icon picker.

Search for the app icon you wish to use using the search bar at the top of the screen.

Tap your desired color icon.

Hit Done.

Repeat Steps 1-8 with each of your dock icons.

If you want a rainbow app drawer icon, there are a few icons throughout Glim I’d recommend:

Light Flow (rainbow fan)

Lovoo (rainbow heart)

Music Maker Jam (rainbow sound waves)

Photodirector Cyberlink (rainbow camera lens)

Sony Sketch (Rainbow Prism)

If you don’t have an app drawer icon, good for you, you get to skip this step! I’ve never quite be able to shake having one myself, but you do you. You can also extend your rainbow app theming to your app drawer, depending on how much time and patience you have.

Widgets

If you just want icons and a wallpaper on your home screen, that’s awesome! You’re already done! If, however, you’d like to get a little information on your screen without covering up the beauty, may I suggest a tastefully placed weather widget from 1Weather? 1Weather is a beautiful, Material, modern weather app with a wonderful layout and the best damn weather widgets in Android. They scale beautifully across a variety of home screens, they can blend in or stand out with practiced ease, and they come in half a dozen formats for your weather-aware priorities.

I’ll leave the size and placement of your widget up to you, and most launchers will handle widgets well. These instructions were drafted for a phone using Nova Launcher, but widgets should be easy to find on your own phone.

How to add a 1Weather widget to your home screen

Long-press an open space on your home screen.

Tap Widgets.

Press and drag the 1Weather Compact Widget or 1Weather Tabbed Widget to the desired location on your home screen.

In the widget settings window that appears, tap Background.

Tap Dark. For the Compact widget, this will set your widget’s icons and text to white.

Tap Background Opacity.

Drag it to 0% and tap OK.

(Tabbed Only) Tap Icon Set.

(Tabbed Only) Tap White.

Tap Accent.

Tap the color that best matches with your wallpaper’s color.

Tap Done.

My story

On June 12, 2016, a horrible, horrible person walked into a nightclub, one of the places that the community could come to dance and sing and bare their hearts and souls and to belong, and they took 49 loving souls from this world.

I only called Orlando home for 8 months in 2010 and another 3 months in 2011. I never went to Pulse, or any of the bars in Orlando outside one tavern I visited with my Disney coworkers after long shifts for bar food and blowing steam. I’ve only visited bars for about a year now, and I don’t go for the liquor; I go so I can sing and bare my soul and belong, just for a little while, in a small bar in a small town. That someone can walk into a bar and steal that safety from those most in need of it infuriates me, but I can’t let it terrify me.

I can’t stop people from hating those that are different from them. I can’t stop people from buying guns or selling them to people who have no business owning a gun. I can’t even stop my own state from quite literally pissing millions of dollars away trying to legislate their fear and mistrust of the transgendered members of our community. But I can keep smiling. I can keep advocating love and acceptance.

And I can theme a phone with pride. So that’s what I’m gonna do.

Show us your pride

There are a million ways to show your pride and a million ways to customize your home screen! Do you cover your home screen with rainbow icons and fantastic wallpapers? Do you deck your desktop with color-matched widgets for weather, music and whatever else your heart desires? Do you tweak the colors of your folders, app drawers, indicators and everything else to match your wallpaper? Show us how you show your pride in the comments below.